s themselves are best contented with their
situation. They are not the prime movers in the agitations which
concern them. An examination of the tables of the last census will
demonstrate that they do not attach much importance to political
rights. It will be found that the free people of color are most
numerous in some of those States which accord them the fewest
political privileges; and in those States which have granted them the
right of suffrage they seem to see but few attractions. In Maryland
there were, in 1860, 83,942 free people of color; in Pennsylvania,
56,949; in Ohio, 36,673. In neither of those States were they voters.
In the State of New York, where they could not vote except under a
property qualification, which excluded the most of them, they numbered
49,005. But in Massachusetts, where they did then and do now vote,
there were but 9,602. And in all New England, (except Connecticut,
where they are not allowed to vote,) there were at the last census but
16,084. If the American negro, in his desire and capacity for
self-government, bore any resemblance to the Caucasian, he would
distinguish himself by emigration; and, spurning the soil which had
enslaved his race, he would seek equality and independence in a more
congenial clime. But the spirit of independence and hardy manhood
which brought the Puritans to the shores of a New England wilderness
he lacks. He will not even go to Massachusetts now, although, instead
of a stormy ocean, his barrier is only an imaginary State line, and
instead of a howling wilderness, he is invited to a land resounding
with the myriad voices of the industrial arts, and instead of painted
savages with uplifted tomahawks, he has reason to expect a crowd of
male and female philanthropists, with beaming faces and outstretched
hands, to welcome him and call him brother. There will he find
lecturers to prove his equality, and statesmen to claim him as an
associate ruler in the land. If he cares for these things, or is fit
for them, why does he linger outside upon the very borders of his
political Eden? Why does he not enter into it--avoiding Connecticut in
his route--and take possession? The fact is, that the fine political
theories set up in his behalf are not in accordance with the natural
instinct of the negro, which, in this particular, is truer than the
philosophy of his white advisers.

"They are but superficial thinkers who imagine that the organic
differences of races can b